I have been sporadic in posting on this blog this past month. That is because I have been planning my sojourn to India, packing and arriving first at New Delhi and then at Chennai. I have many interesting stories to relate, but I first need to get this off my chest: Indian restaurants and eateries [...]

Winter days always bring to mind, images of my older sister, wrapped cosily in a blanket, on a “charpoy” (rope cot) placed on the lush green lawn, sunning herself after a wonderful lunch.
Those were the days we used to live in Jodhpur, a city in the desert state of Rajasthan. Summers in Rajasthan were usually [...]

As a young child growing up in a South Indian Brahmin household, it was not surprising that I was reared to be a vegetarian, save for an odd serving of eggs, once in a while. We were considered a “progressive” brahmin family because my father ate eggs and my mother cooked them. But eggs aside, [...]

Are you at wit’s end, wondering how to wean your kids off video games for a couple of hours on the weekend? And all you can think of as a hobby, is to bake sugar and butter-laden cookies with them? Are you worried that the very act of baking cookies with them, while creating those [...]

South Indian Brahmins are known for their enormous affinity for yogurt. In India, people refer to yogurt as “curd”. No meal, and I mean literally no meal – breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack, is complete without a bowl of homemade curd.
Yogurt in India is usually home-made with live culture. Every night, before the housewife winds [...]